The Athens County Recorder's Office is working diligently to black-out the first five digits of Social Security numbers on thousands of online documents from 1981 to 2007 after receiving complaints from Athens County residents, said the county recorder.
Residents were informed that their Social Security numbers were available online by Betty B.J. Ostergren, founder, editor and publisher of the Virginia Watchdog, a group that campaigns to get public records offline.
The links to the records were taken offline Friday and put back on late Monday after the office was bombarded with calls from title searchers and real estate companies that needed the records for business operations, said Julia Michael Scott, Athens County recorder.
Images of veterans' discharge papers, DD Form 214, have also been taken offline, said Scott.
The recorder's office has been working for 10 months to redact, or remove the first five Social Security numbers, on documents, Scott said. The last four are necessary to ensure proper identification of citizens with the same name.
As soon as she realized complete Social Security numbers were online, Scott requested a computer program from the company that puts the records online. The program would redact the Social Security numbers online and in the recorders office, but it was not developed until 10 months ago.
With Social Security numbers online, it is easy for fraud to occur, said Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren.
[Having the numbers online] complicates matters for people trying to protect their identity
and I absolutely agree that the numbers should be taken offline said Warren.
The recorders office began posting public records online in 2003.
It is my job to make public records available and easily accessible said Scott. When Athens County was the one of the first counties in the state with high-tech capabilities
I was proud to use them.
Many of the documents that have Social Security numbers on them are mortgages from the 1990s, when banks required Social Security numbers for signatories, said Jessica Markins, chief deputy recorder. Since Sept. 28, 2006, Social Security numbers have not been not included in documents filed for recording purposes according to a law in the Ohio Revised Code.
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